Captain, Sergeant, Agent
by cougarlips
Summary: Zombie apocalypse AU; No powers AU; 3rd Person POV; Oneshot. M for apocalypse-typical violence (off screen).


**a/n** : this is my first au marvel fic (but not my first zombie fic), and also the longest piece i've written (+uploaded) in well over 3 years. _it's unbeta'd_. i've read through it several times over the last few days and i'm pretty sure i've got most of the errors taken care of, but if any have scraped through they are all my own and please don't hesitate to correct me in the comments!

* * *

Steve looked on at the makeshift camp with weary eyes. His hands were beginning to strain from his white-knuckled grip on his pack and machete, but he ignored it to focus all of his attention on the noises he heard from inside the perimeter. (No real fence, he noted immediately. Just three rows of string with cans, each buffered by a row of sharpened stakes. The living would have no problem sneaking in; the dead, however, would make a racket like no one's business.)

He heard quiet speech over a crackling fire.

He heard crying muffled by the sound of hushing.

He heard a girl laughing through wheezing breaths.

The first sign of movement he witnessed came from a tall, black man with a militant disposition who strode to the other side of their perimeter and stared Steve down. His left eye was hidden underneath an eyepatch that Steve catalogued quickly as a potential weakness and blind-spot if it came down to it. He stood strong as the other man fixed his deep brown eye on Steve.

"They say you've been standing there all morning," he said, and yes, Steve thought absently, his voice was just as deep and sure as he expected.

Steve looked on, making no move and expressing no emotion on his face. He knew what he looked like, wearing an ill-fitted leather coat over camouflaged denim and jeans, a dented trash can lid over his back like a shield, and a military-grade hard hat over his head. One hand gripped the strap of the backpack he had hidden underneath the trash can lid. The other hand gripped a machete dripping with brain matter. His once-pale skin hardened by the sun's abuse and smeared with dirt and mud to easily blend in with the surroundings in darkness.

He met the man's gaze head on for what felt like ages before he turned on his heel and walked away. With his hands folded behind his back, he entered the nearest tent with his posture still erect. He was in there long enough for the sun to begin beating down on Steve's shoulders, burning through his layers, but he refused to move. Not until he knew what was going on. If he was welcome. If they were bad. (He doubted that last one, but his muscles were tense, ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble anyways.)

But just as his resolve began to waver, the man came back out with a woman one step behind him. Steve could tell by her strut that she had training in minding her body; she gracefully strode to the black man's previous position and turned her emotionless eyes on his.

"What's your name?" she asked. Her voice was husky and cool, but not unkind.

"Captain Rogers," he answered briskly, and he caught the roll of her eyes.

"Former titles mean shit," she told him. "What you did before doesn't mean anything if you can't hold your own now."

He could feel himself wanting to smile at her, but he forced it down and kept his face neutral. "Steven Rogers," he said.

"And what brings you here, Rogers?" she asked.

He took a deep breath and met her eyes evenly. He told her, "You're the first community I've come across without snipers shooting anything that moves and didn't want to kill me on sight."

She quirked her head at him and pursed her lips before turning to the black man curiously. She turned back to Steve with her arms crossed over her chest. "How long have you been on your own?"

He forced his face into neutrality after he winced at her tone. They both caught it.

"Since the winter," he answered. "I was one of a group of three. We worked together before the dead started walking."

"What happened to them?" the man asked. He mirrored the woman's position but his face was cold and impassive unlike her curious.

Steve refused to look away from the man's eye when he choked down the lump in his throat to answer. "We took refuge in the first gated community we saw. Their leader didn't impose any rules or limitations on the people he took in. They killed Sergeant Barnes when he told them we wanted to leave," he said brusquely.

"Agent Carter and I made it out and we were on our own for another month before we were swept up in a herd. She'd been scratched along her side by one of the dead. There was no way to save her."

"You killed her?" the woman asked.

Steve pressed his lips together and took a steadying breath. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "She begged me to keep her from coming back. If I didn't do it, she would've done it herself."

The woman stared back at him before she stepped forward, now only a few feet away from Steve. He could see the red of her hair underneath the baseball cap she wore and the green of her eyes now that the cap didn't shadow them.

"I'm Natasha," she told him. "Our camp isn't big, but almost all of us have been here together since the beginning. It may be a while before they accept you."

The black man stepped forward. "Call me Fury," he said shortly. "Before you come in, we'll need to check your supplies."

"You can have them all back just as soon as you come in," Natasha informed him, "but we try to keep an inventory of everything we have inside just in case something comes up missing or you decide to pull one over on us." Then she winked, a teasing smile forming on her lips. "You can keep your shirt and jeans on, and Fury'll step over and pat you down. Unless you want to strip to your nothings."

Steve nodded, stiffly handing her the machete and the hat from his head. Everything he gave her she handed to Fury. His shield - a sad replacement for the one he was forced to abandon at the camp with Barnes and Carter - and backpack followed. His leather coat, his camouflage coat, the denim jacket underneath it, no doubt weighing fifteen pounds altogether, went next, and he watched Fury remove all of his knives and the last bit of food he had stashed in every pocket and fold.

He handed his hiking boots to Natasha and was left standing in a thin tank top and jeans. His hair flopped limp in his eyes and he pushed it back with his fingers. He watched Fury step over and under the lengths of string to stand in front of him and Steve spread his arms out for the man.

"If you try anything," Fury said, his voice as cold as steel, "anything," he emphasized, widening his eye, "inside our camp, you won't even have time to blink before I bury a bullet in your skull."

Steve nodded.

Fury stepped back and gestured for Steve to follow his movements to move through the lines soundlessly, and when he was inside the perimeter Natasha handed him his jackets. "We'll gather a meeting," she told him. "Let everyone know you're here and see if anyone has any objections, work through any we might have, and then get to know each other."

She motioned for him to follow her inside the tent Fury retrieved her from, but stopped just before turning in. "We don't have much in the way of showers, but if you'd like I can get one of the guys to show you where we clean up."

Taking a deep breath, Steve nodded. With a quick correction to her step, she began making her way towards another tent and ran her fingers along the zipped closure.

"Clint," she said shortly, and Steve watched as a man opened the tent and stepped out. His dirty blonde hair stood up on end as if he'd just rolled out of bed, but his grey eyes were anything but drowsy as they locked onto Steve's.

Natasha snapped in front of his face and he turned his eyes onto her's, attention rapt. He didn't look away as Natasha spoke: "This is Steve. Fury and I are arranging a meeting, but we figure he'll be better off if he has time to clean up before everyone hovers. Mind showing him around?"

The man nodded. "Want me to introduce him or just show him around?" he asked her.

"Just show him around. If anyone asks, tell them to come to me or Fury. Everything will be discussed later as a group."

Clint blinked at her and then turned his eyes to Steve, holding out his hand. "Clint Barton," he introduced himself. "You talk much?"

Steve eyed Natasha, who watched with humor in her face. "Not… a whole lot," Steve answered. "Not lately."

"Listen," he said, and Steve turned back to face him. Clint had an easy grin on his face. "I didn't mean to pry, but my hearing aids are running out of juice so I'm trying to preserve them for as long as I can. If you talk a lot I can put them in, but otherwise I need to be able to clearly read your lips. Unless you can sign - that would be awesome, since no one else seems to know how."

Natasha waved him off. "Clint," she barked, and he piped down, looking up at her sheepishly. "Show him where everything is and maybe set up another tent?" she asked him.

He nodded. "Of course," he replied.

* * *

If Steve had any solid grip on his emotions, he would have cried upon seeing the small makeshift shower set up in the trees beside the camp. Clint ran a hand through his hair nervously. "Some of the guys here were bigwig science guys before. One of them was an engineer and he set this up pretty early on.

"It's not much, and we don't really use it that often because we don't have a whole lot of water to spare, but since it's warmed up we can start going back to the pond down about a mile to stock back up. It froze over pretty early in the winter," he admitted.

Steve felt a bar of soap being pressed into his hand. "Take your time, man," Clint said. "I can make sure no one sneaks up on you, if you'd like, or I can go grab you some clothes to change into and we can get these cleaned up."

He felt himself nod at the man. "I… yeah," he said shortly. "I've got some clothes in my pack. I'll just change into those."

In the end he was pretty sure he scrubbed his scalp at least three times and his entire body twice. He felt his stomach hollow out as he pulled out the spare clothes from his bag and slipped on the faded green henley and khakis that once belonged to Bucky, too short at the ankles but unnoticable as he tucked the ends into his boots.

Clint looked at him with a smile when he finally got out of the hidden canopy. "Feel better?" he asked, but he didn't wait for Steve to answer before he continued. "Nat stopped by to tell you that when you're ready we can go to the Center. We've got snares all over and managed to get a decent haul in so we'll have a pretty good meal, and once we're all together we can get the meeting started. She took the liberty of making one of the guys set up a tent for you."

"Is she your leader or something?" Steve asked Clint, and Clint snorted.

"We don't really have any single leader," he told Steve, "but yeah, she's definitely one of the most respected here. We had a council once, but we lost a lot of people over the winter so we disbanded it. There just wasn't enough of us left to warrant that, you know? Now everyone's got equal say." He paused, then he shrugged. "Nat's opinion has a lot of weight, but so does Fury's. Going down the metaphorical chain of command is… probably me, I guess, but only because I'm the best hunter we've got. Then it's Wilson since he's the clearest headed guy here, and the STEM guys, Tony and Bruce, after him."

As they neared what Clint had called the "Center", he began pointing out some of the individuals. Pointing to a dark haired girl with a pinch to her mouth, Clint said, "That's Wanda. She's the newest addition. She came here with her brother just as it started warming up in the spring. We lost him about two weeks ago." He added the last bit of information in a hush, his eyes downcast.

Then he nodded towards two men: one with a mess of greying curls and the other with a partially-maintained goatee. "Those are our science guys. The older one is Bruce; he studied nuclear physics. Tony says they've been together since Before, but Bruce himself is pretty quiet. He does his part, though, so we don't really have much of an issue with him.

"And Tony … Tony's a handful," he admitted with a grimace. "He will not hesitate to tell you how he graduated from MIT summa cum laude at seventeen and was some hotshot billionaire or something, but he's pretty useless when it comes to doing anything domestic like cook or make house or hunt. He's the cockiest motherfucker you'll ever meet and, unfortunately, he's the smartest motherfucker you'll ever meet. He's the best strategist we've got, and that's saying something since we've got Fury here."

"Fury?" Steve asked.

Clint nodded. "Colonel Nicholas J. Fury. We know he worked for the government, but he refuses to dish on what branch or exactly what he did, even if we've all told him that it's not like he'll get arrested for breaking his oath of secrecy. We're all pretty sure he's actually killed a few men before all this went down." At Steve's face, Clint blanched. "I didn't mean it like that," he backtracked.

Steve shook his head. "No, you're fine," he said quietly. Clint took a deep breath and continued, pointing this time to a black man sitting stock-still beside the fire.

"That's Sam Wilson, former United States Air Force paratrooper. He retired just before the world ended and was setting up in DC to work as a PTSD counselor at the Pentagon. Ironically enough, he's probably the most put-together guy here. He's been helping Wanda open up."

"Is that everyone?" Steve asked.

Clint tried to hide the way he winced, but he nodded. "We used to have this guy who went by Thor, who came with his brother, his girlfriend, Jane, and this guy named Selvig, but his brother wasn't… all there," he said slowly. "He tricked Jane into getting herself taken by a herd passing through a few towns over on a run. She was one of our scientists, right next to Bruce and Tony. So was Selvig, actually. Anyway, when it came out what happened, we exiled the brother, but Thor refused to let him go out there alone. He ended up exiling himself, too."

"Some brotherly bond they had if he still wanted to be around him after that," Steve commented.

"No kidding," Clint responded. "And like I said, we just lost Wanda's brother. Sam had a partner when we all met, and they'd been together since their Air Force days, but he was one of the first few taken."

He looked down at his hands. "There was a flu that went around during the winter that took a lot of our people: my wife and kids, a man named Phil, a woman named Maria. It also took our other two science guys: Selvig - he was an astrophysicist - and a kid named Peter who studied biophysics and biochemistry. He was taking up engineering as Tony's protege before the world ended."

"I'm sorry to hear about your family," Steve told him honestly.

When Clint looked up at him, he had a sad smile on his lips. "Is it bad that I'm glad they don't have to be so terrified anymore?" he asked Steve. "I miss them every day like there's a massive, gaping hole in my chest but they don't hurt anymore."

Steve found himself nodding. "I know what you mean," he said quietly. His fingers absently spun the ring he hadn't removed in four years.

Steve decided he liked Clint Barton. He talked a lot, which Steve didn't mind as he himself talked too little. He made fast friends with Sam Wilson, the Air Force counselor, and Bruce Banner, the nuclear physicist who listened more than he spoke. He was slowly opening up to the girl, Wanda Maximoff, even though she sometimes caught herself rambling to him in Russian without thinking.

He respected Fury more and more every time he talked to him; He was levelheaded and calm every time a problem came up, and he was willing to think the situation through before jumping to any conclusions that could harm the group or anyone individually.

Natasha, he discovered, was a woman of many faces. Clint told him she was a Russian-trained spy chosen to infiltrate the US government but the US got their hands on her first, but Steve took that information with a grain of salt. Still, she was one of the best runners they had, and he knew he could count on her to save his life if it came down to it.

It took until winter rolled around again for him to begin feeling like the group was his own, but he still slept with his pocketwatch containing Peggy and Bucky's photos clenched in one hand and a machete in his other.

* * *

Steve was a strategist - better even than Tony, Clint told him - and so it eventually fell to him to organize and lead supply runs alongside Sam and Natasha.

Wearing the very same outfit he wore when he first came across their camp, he hovered over the map splayed across the ground. The other two wore similar outfits on either side of him.

He traced a finger along the main road. "This way's been full of the dead every time we go through, but the snow's still pretty thick there. If we make a run for it, the ones that aren't still frozen will take at least twice as long as normal to reach us."

He stopped his finger at their destination: a hole-in-the-wall drugstore and pharmacy. "I can create a diversion here," he pointed at an alley halfway down the street, "if you think they're going to be an issue so you can be in and out, but the show is thick. I really think they're going to be too cold to move."

Sam nodded slowly. "I can create the diversion if necessary," he said. At Steve's indignation, he turned his dark eyes up. "I know the area better than you do. If the dead are faster than anticipated and they catch up to me, I have a better chance of knowing how to figure a way out." He turned back towards the map. "What about a rendezvous point?"

Natasha extended a finger to an adjacent street. She stopped it on top of the second building in. "Here," she told them. "There's a fire escape on its south-side that's holding steady. I checked the last time I went out. If we run into any trouble, we meet on its rooftop."

She pulled her hands back to gather her hair into a bun on the top of her head, eyeing Steve and Sam evenly. "I can scout ahead," she said, already sliding her visor back on. "I'm small and fast and know how to get by without a sound, even in the snow. They won't notice me."

Sam stopped her with a hand to her arm. "Nat-" he said, then he swallowed and nodded. "Be careful."

"I'm a pretty dancer born and raised in Stalingrad," she teased. "I'm always careful."

As soon as they began the mission, they realized the diversion was unnecessary as the dead ones stayed frozen in place by their rotted remains, but still Sam crouched in his alley as Natasha bolted through the snow, Steve on her heels, to the building on the far side of the street. The door was open, and so after a shrill whistle and no groaning made itself loud and clear, they darted inside, weapons raised.

Steve liked working alongside Natasha, who could flip between cold and unyielding to warm and teasing faster than a coin. She walked beside Wanda as both a sister and a mother figure, guiding her towards survival with no nonsense, but was something between a sister and a best friend to Clint, especially now as he was almost 100% deaf without his hearing aids. During runs she picked up books on sign language if she could find them, but in the same breath she could hurl her knives through the air and bury them hilt-deep in the skulls of the dead.

Right now she crouched low to the ground and crept silently along the springy hardwood floor, her nose crinkling in distaste as the smell of rotting corpses swirled around them in the air.

"Steve," she whispered, pointing the tip of her knife at what appeared to be a nest of blankets and clothes in the corner of the room. She made her way closer towards it slowly, but a few seconds later, she turned back to him, her face gaunt. "We need to go," she said.

"Why?" Steve asked, but before she could say any more a figure leaped up from the mound behind her, using one arm to press a blade into her throat.

"What are you doing here?" the man asked, and before Steve could process the breath leaving his lungs, Sam walked in with his gun trained on the man's forehead.

"You put the knife down and you let her go," he demanded.

Steve felt his knees wobble but he didn't let himself fall as he stared at the man's long hair and sharp grey eyes.

He didn't drop the knife, and Steve heard Sam thumb back the safety. Without thinking, Steve grabbed the gun from Sam's hands and raised his arms in surrender. The man turned his eyes to Steve's, and recognition flashed in them before it was gone and they were cold once more.

But Natasha was on this run with them for a reason. She was their secret weapon for a reason, and Steve knew that. She was easily a head shorter than the man behind her but she was also a ballerina-turned-spy and knew better than most how to use her body to her advantage.

Taking a calming breath, she wrenched her foot back and kicked him in the groin. When his right hand dropped the knife, she wrapped her arms around Bucky's neck and used his iron-wrought stance as leverage to hoist her thighs around his throat.

Steve watched in horror during the seconds it took for her to render him unconscious, and when he fell to the ground she let Sam catch her before she fell with him. When Sam released Natasha he immediately dropped to pat Bucky down. Steve watched his chest rise and fall steadily, but his face was red, his throat void of color where he'd been suffocated. Ignoring the other two, he dropped to his knees and pulled Bucky's head into his lap.

"We need to get the hell out of here," Sam said, now standing before Natasha, moving her jackets out of the way to check the damage on her neck. A thin line of blood dripped like sludge into the collar of her shirt.

"Steve," Natasha warned, and his eyes lifted to meet hers.

"He's coming with us," Steve told them bluntly.

He stood, drawing himself to his full height as Sam widened his eyes. "We need to get the hell out of here," Sam repeated, gesturing between the three of them. "He," he said, pointing at Bucky's figure on the ground, "tried to kill us."

Steve stepped up to Sam. He stared into his deep eyes with his jaw clenched. "I will not leave him behind. He's coming with us if I have to drag him back myself."

Sam's face flushed. He stared at Steve for several seconds before he cursed under his breath. "Is the way clear?" he asked Natasha.

She peeked out the door and nodded, but she turned to face Steve. "Unless you plan on carrying him bridal-style, you're gonna need an extra set of hands to carry him."

Steve turned to face her, and she lifted her hands innocently. "You can't just carry him on your back, Captain," she said, stressing his title sarcastically. "Guy's missing his left arm up to his shoulder."

In the end, she helped hoist Bucky onto Steve's back and walked behind them to make sure he didn't stop off since they couldn't fold his arms across Steve's chest to hold him down. Steve took his weight without a break in his stride, ignoring the look of pure distrust in Sam's eyes.

Clint was the one to meet them at the perimeter, his eyes widening first in surprise when he saw the figure on Steve's back and then in alarm when he saw the blood on Natasha's throat. He helped her and Sam through the lines as Steve surged forward, still carefully clutching Bucky, and marched straight on to his tent.

Bucky was still unconscious when Steve laid him out on his sleeping bag and began stripping him of his layers: one camouflage raincoat, one denim jacket, one insulated flannel shirt, one long-sleeved henley, all of them with the left sleeves folded inside out to press against his side because, when he was finally left in a grimy tank-top, Steve saw the twisted, burnt scar where his arm used to connect to his torso.

He folded all of it and placed them in piles in the corner of his tent. He dampened one of his own shirts to begin wiping away the dirt, mud, and dried blood from Bucky's face.

He heard the nails scratching against his tent and didn't bother to turn around before Clint muttered through the mesh, "You can't skip protocol, Steve. He needs to be accepted before you just bring him in."

Steve sat up, still watching Bucky's peaceful face. How long had it been since he had a good sleep? he asked himself. How long since he could smooth out the lines that left permanent creases between his brows?

Clint stood at the entrance for several more seconds before Steve heard him sigh and walk away.

* * *

It was long after night fell that Bucky finally began waking up. Steve fought his desire to clutch Bucky's hand in fear of startling the other man. He could hear the fire crackling in the center of the camp and heard Fury and Sam angrily arguing that Bucky tried to kill Natasha and he should be gone, but no one seemed to have any desire to come to Steve to tell him to abandon the man. It had been going on for hours.

Bucky brought his right hand up to his throat and winced as he tried to clear it before his brain began processing his surroundings. His eyes widened in alarm as he felt the sleeping bag beneath him and he pressed a hand to the single shirt over his chest.

"Buck, you're safe," Steve whispered, and Bucky fixed his terrified gray eyes on Steve's.

He opened his mouth to speak but only a hoarse croak came out. Steve shook his head, handing him a bottle of water. Bucky deftly opened it with his one hand and Steve watched him restrain and keep from drinking the whole thing.

He tried again. "St…" he began. He shook his head, tears welling up in his eyes. "St… ve?"

Steve nodded with a watery smile. "Yeah," he said. Nothing more; he didn't trust the way his voice was already straining to keep from crying.

"Oh, God," he heard Bucky choke out, falling back onto the sleeping bag. "I died. 'm dead, aren't I?" he whispered.

"No, you're alive," Steve urged. "You're alive, Bucky. I'm alive. We're really here."

Distantly, he heard the voices outside cut off, but he focused his attention on Bucky, who was sitting back up with a wary look in his eyes at Steve's words.

"They told me you died," he said hoarsely. "They said you and Peg…"

Steve's face fell. "Peggy is gone," he told him quietly. "They told us you tried to escape and were caught by the dead, and when they got to you all they could salvage was your arm. I knew it was you," he whispered. He pulled from around his neck the chain he wore his dog tags, and on it also rested a golden band.

"I really am dead," he whispered, now ignoring Steve's words. "God, the infection spread. I can still feel the bite, Stevie. It burns, Stevie - why does it burn?"

"Bucky, you're alive," Steve whispered. "You don't have any bites. You're safe here. There's no infection."

Bucky sat up and looked down at his left shoulder. "I can still feel it," he repeated. "It's gone but it's still there. God, it hurts."

Steve inched forward and held out a hand to Bucky, who looked at it with trepidation. Slowly Steve wrapped his arms around Bucky's shoulders and leaned back, letting Bucky relax into his chest. He was freezing, Steve realized. He reached around for his jacket and draped it over them.

"What happened?" Bucky asked Steve.

Steve took a deep breath and stalled by pressing his lips to Bucky's forehead. Then he leaned back and brushed his nose against Bucky's, sighing. "When we got to Pierce's we were there for about a week," he began. "When we saw how they were, we wanted to leave."

"I remember that," Bucky confirmed. "I went by myself to tell them we wanted out because Peggy wasn't comfortable being left alone."

Steve nodded. "We didn't hear back from you after that. After about a day, they came into our tent and threw your arm down at us. They said you tried to escape on your own and were attacked by the dead, and all they could save for us was your arm."

"And you recognised it because of my ring," Bucky stated.

Steve sighed into Bucky's throat. "Yeah," he whispered. "We knew you would never try to escape without us. We knew that was a lie. We just didn't think you were still alive somewhere. We saw your arm and it was so messed up that we figured they tied you up and fed you to the dead. We never would've left without you if we thought you were still alive," he said, desperation bleeding into his voice.

Bucky shook his head. "You left," he prompted softly.

"Yeah, we left," Steve said. "About a week later we waited until Rumlow was on watch and Peggy distracted him so I could take him out. We didn't look back."

"What happened after that?" Bucky asked. "What happened to Peggy?"

Steve buried his face in Bucky's shirt. He could feel his face screw up as he tried to keep his voice calm. "It was a few weeks later. We thought the herd would be slower than it was since it was getting so cold. We got cocky. She twisted her ankle running and one of the dead ones caught her. All it had left were the bones and ligaments in its hands but when it caught her, it tore straight through her shirt and into her skin. When the fever hit, she begged me to put her down."

"You were alone after that?" Bucky asked.

"I was… for a while. When summer came I found this place, and they accepted me in after about a day. I guess I've been with them for about six months now."

Bucky leaned back and his grey eyes were taut with worry. "They aren't happy you brought me here. I heard the man earlier. You broke protocol or something."

Steve shook his head. "That doesn't matter right now. What matters is it's safe and if any of them want you gone they're gonna have to go through me."

* * *

Fury wanted the meeting to start immediately. He tapped his fingers impatiently and refused to look away from Bucky, not bothering to mask the pure distrust in his eyes.

It was Natasha who convinced them to wait until high noon, giving Bucky enough time to clean up and make a better case for himself. Steve could have kissed her, even if she kept a hand pressed to the bandage on her throat and didn't have much warmth in her eyes when she looked at Steve.

Bucky refused to do anything that would jeopardize his situation, so after Steve took him to the makeshift shower, he sat beside the fire with his layers and layers of coats and jackets.

Despite the fact that they were surrounded by a plethora of distrust, Steve and Bucky seemed to exist in their own world. Even as more of the group began waking up and coming to see the stranger brought in with caution thrown to the wind, the couple only had eyes for each other. Even Tony couldn't think of anything to say when he saw them together.

They sat on the dirt with Steve's legs locked around Bucky's hips and Bucky's legs circling the ground around Steve. Bucky draped his arm over Steve's shoulders, looping it loosely around the back of his neck. He ran his fingers through the hair at his nape and couldn't help but smile every time Steve shivered.

Their intimacy was anything but sexual, yet the rest of the group still felt guilty for watching their reunion play out.

* * *

Wanda was the first person to approach them.

"Steve," she said quietly, her accent lilting at the edges of her voice. Steve turned his head to look at her, resting his temple on Bucky's shoulder.

"You two need to eat," she told him. She raised her hands, holding a plate of whatever food they had left from the snares, two bottles of water wedged between her elbow and her side.

Steve lifted his head up completely and as Bucky stirred against him, he reached for the plate. "Is it on Fury's orders that everyone's ignoring us?" he asked Wanda quietly.

She sat down beside the two and rested her hands in her lap. She flicked her eyes towards Bucky but returned to Steve when the other man refused to look up from the ground. "He is not happy with you, Steve," she warned. "Sam even less so. Clint, Natasha, Tony, and Bruce appear to be… undecided."

"And what about you?" Steve questioned.

She smiled at him, but there was little humor to be found in it. "I'm bringing you food and water instead of avoiding you like you're… pariahs."

Steve turned his eyes back to Bucky, who lifted his eyes to Steve's nervously. He felt a corner of his lips lift and he nodded his head toward Wanda.

Bucky finally looked at her with his full attention and felt his stomach drop at the hard set of her youthful face. She stared into his eyes unblinking. Then she held out her hand and her face broke out in a smile. "My name is Wanda," she told him.

Bucky's eyes darted between hers and Steve's before he slowly shook her hand. "Name's James," he mumbled. "I go by Bucky."

She made herself comfortable on the ground and took a swig of water from Steve's bottle with a sly grin. "So how do you two know each other?" she asked, gesturing to their still entangled forms.

Steve smiled when Bucky lowered his gaze again. He answered Wanda, "We've been best friends since we were seven."

Bucky surprised Wanda with a snort. "This kid didn't know how to say no to a fight," he mumbled. "He almost got himself killed before I turned the corner and saw his sorry ass and broke it up."

Steve scoffed at Bucky. "It wasn't that bad," he argued, but Bucky cut him off with a chuckle.

"You had three broken ribs and your inhaler was practically glued to your hand for a week."

Steve rolled his eyes and looked up at Clint as he joined on their other side. "Somehow I doubt you were so susceptible to being beaten up, Rogers," he admitted, sitting heavily and gesturing to Steve's body.

Bucky struggled against a grin before carefully reaching into his pocket, ignoring Steve's whines when he realized what he was grabbing. Pulling out his pocket watch, he opened it to reveal a photo of fifteen-year-old Bucky and Steve, all arms and legs before he hit his growth spurt.

He handed the photo to Clint as Steve buried his burning face in Bucky's shoulder. "Damn, Rogers," Clint sputtered.

"Laugh it up," Steve sighed. "I could kick all your asses now, and that's all that matters."

"C'mon, you can't lie and tell me that you knowing how to sneak around from being five-foot-nothing wasn't useful," Bucky breathed into his neck.

"Just because you've got a lead foot," Steve countered. "And my size had nothing to do with it."

Bucky's eyes twinkled as Steve pulled back to look at him. "No," Bucky agreed solemnly. "It was the dance lessons."

Steve shook his head but he was smiling at Bucky. With a heavy sigh, he pressed his forehead to Bucky's neck again. "I want a divorce," he teased. "I don't know if I can take this kind of abuse."

"You two are married?" Wanda asked on the left. Steve nodded and turned his head around to face her.

"It's not documented," he admitted, lifting the fingers on his left hand from Bucky's side, watching the sun glint off of the gold ring. "We were going to wait until we were officially retired or discharged, whichever came first, but the world ended."

Bucky hummed. "We had the rings and ceremony planned and everything. It would've been small, just my family and Peggy as witnesses."

"As soon as the military started caving in on itself, we jumped ship." Steve sat back so Clint could understand, but he didn't remove his eyes from Bucky's. "We were on the road for about a week before Peggy made fun of us for being an old married couple, so we exchanged rings then and there."

Bucky reached under his clothes for the ring Steve gave him the night before on his necklace.

Before they could say any more, Fury stood up and cleared his throat. Steve sighed and disentangled himself from Bucky's limbs, holding his hand out to help him stand as Wanda and Clint stood on either side of them.

Natasha, Tony, Bruce, and Fury watched the pair with cool eyes. Then Tony opened up: "You always been armless?" he asked.

Bucky's face paled but he held his ground in front of them. "We got caught with a bad camp pretty early on. When we tried to tell them we were leaving, they threw me to the dead. I killed almost all of them but one of them got my forearm."

Steve's grip on Bucky's right hand tightened as his face blanched.

"They cut it off at the elbow to…" he paused and shut his eyes, "to prove to Steve and Peggy I was gone." He shook his head. "Then they reallykicked me out. They figured if the infection didn't spread and I actually survived them sawing my arm off, then I was too weak to fight back and I was dead anyway."

"So why don't you have an - I don't know - upper arm?" Tony questioned.

Bucky took a steadying breath. "I survived the first bite, and I survived my second. Neither of them came without a price," he said bluntly.

Fury raised an eyebrow at Bucky. "You mean to tell me you removed your own arm?"

Steve felt Bucky's change in posture as his back straightened and he reverted to his military habits. Bucky treated Fury as if he were their CO and didn't break eye contact. "I did what I had to do to survive. Nothing more and nothing less."

Fury stepped forward and stared down at Bucky. "You tried to kill one of our own yesterday," he said crisply. "Tell me why I should bother keeping you around."

Bucky took a step closer to match Fury, and he looked up to meet his eye directly. "With all due respect, Sir," he said evenly, "three of your own invaded my territory. Are you going to tell me that if three outsiders invaded your camp, you wouldn't do what was necessary to defend it?" Fury's sharp breath was cut off as Bucky continued, nodding his head in Natasha's direction. "She could have killed me less than a heartbeat after I had that knife to her throat."

Fury's eye darted between Bucky's furiously and froze when, behind him, Natasha spoke up. "I don't blame him, Nick," she said softly.

Bruce stepped forward, much to the surprise of the company. "I trust Captain Rogers," he admitted, "and if he trusts this man, so do I." He snuck a glance at Natasha and with a smirk, he added, "If he puts a toe out of line she'll snap it right back."

"All in favor of Barnes staying?" Fury asked shortly.

Wanda, Bruce, and Natasha each raised their hands. Fury stepped away and turned on Tony. "What's your opinion?" he asked.

Tony took a deep breath. "Guy just admitted to amputating his own arm at the shoulder. Quite frankly, I don't know how I feel about that - but hey, if he's as dedicated to helping us survive, I have nothing against him joining."

Sam stood and matched Fury's previous position in front of Bucky, meeting his gaze directly. "Natasha may be able to forgive and forget, but I'm not," he warned. "You were prepared to kill her, even if she had the upper hand. For a second in that shop you didn't even recognise Steve." He narrowed his eyes.

"You've got some issues that just being back with your husband won't fix overnight," Sam continued. "I'm trained in this shit, and I'm going to be keeping my eyes on you."

Bucky pressed his lips together solemnly. "I count on it," he said, all warmth gone from his voice. "I was on my own for a year, and I'm not going to pretend it didn't get to me. It did. I'm gonna need someone to help me keep my head on straight."

Sam nodded slowly and held his hand out. Bucky grasped it securely with his right.

Behind them, Fury nodded. "Then it's settled," he said gruffly. "Barnes stays."


End file.
